Federal regulators approved the production and commercial sale of a strain of salmon whose DNA has been altered to make it grow faster, marking the first U.S. approval for a genetically modified animal raised for human consumption.
In case you 're wondering and we hope you're not, it's called agricultural biotechnology, something the Journal labels a milestone. The modified species is an Atlantic salmon developed by a Massachusetts firm that can grow to market weigh two times faster than the salmon nature provides or the farm raised variety.
If that smells like the odor of money rather than fish, your olfactory nerve is working just fine.
Some might hail this as good news. Others might take a different tact. One of the things we know about cancer cells is that can multiply or grow much faster than ordinary healthy cells. It 's being marketed by its creators as a great thing for science and for consumers.
A gene from a larger Pacific Ocean breed of salmon gets implanted in the Atlantic species that increases growth hormone production. One wonders if any of the new species will eventually show up with acromegaly or a big head? There's enough of those to go around already in politics, media and Wall Street.
In most areas of sport, other than the clandestine world, artificially stimulating HGH is outlawed.
The environmental worry-wort crowd (They are never without their nervous-Nelly concerns; one could call it a human version of inbred GMO.) voices another concern, call it cross pollination as some of these genetic freak salmon escape into the natural waters and wipe what you and I know as natural species.
It's not like certain fish species didn't start disappearing from the globe before the climate change freaks arrived. We all have to make choices. What would you rather have, a bunch O2-spewing, coughing automobiles clumping around or herds of flesh-eating, fire-breathing dinosaurs?
For the nonce, we will pass on the GMO-altered salmon when it hits the market.
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